The great Palm Pre shortage of 2009 is coming! Woe betide thee!

As if swine flu weren’t enough we can now expect to suffer under a Palm Pre shortage come June, a sure sign that we are nearing the End of Times and should repent.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says that they won’t have enough handsets to go around and that customers should organize impromptu Thunderdome battles at Sprint stores in the “Two men enter, one man leaves” model. There will be 30,000 units available on launch and 95% of those will be in Scranton. Quoth him:

We don’t intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while. We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.” Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint

Oh, wait a minute. Could this be an engineered shortage a la the Wii? Yeah, I think so. Dan Hesse knows he’s got a cow that squirts money from her udders with the Pre and he’s not about to let just any slob walk down to the Sprint store. Unless you’re some dudes in San Fran.